1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to an auto-changer for a disk reproducing apparatus.
2. Description of Related Art
A common disk reproducing apparatus having an auto-changer comprises a disk drive mechanism for reproducing information recorded on a disk, a disk rack for retrievably arranging and storing a plurality of disks, a disk mounting mechanism for mounting a disk extracted from the disk rack on the turntable and dismounting a disk having been reproduced from the turntable to return it to the disk rack, and a transfer mechanism for transferring the disk mounting mechanism to a disk retrieving operation position for the disk rack and to a disk mounting operation position for the turntable.
Further, in a disk reproducing apparatus having an auto-changer with a large scale disk rack capable of storing many disks and a plurality of disk drive mechanisms, the disk rack and the disk drive mechanisms are installed in separate regions. Therefore, the disk mounting mechanism travels a long distance to transfer a disk to be reproduced from the disk rack to a disk drive mechanism, and to dismount a disk from the disk drive mechanism and store it to the disk rack. This leads to the problems because of the large apparatus long transfer times. Furthermore, when the disk rack and the disk drive mechanisms are installed in separate regions, there is a disadvantage in that the outer size of the disk reproducing apparatus becomes large.
A disk reproducing apparatus disclosed in Japanese Patent Application Laid-Open No. 5-89586 (1993) is constructed such that each of the plural disk drive mechanisms is moved to each of disk retrieving positions of the disk rack to extract an objective disk from the disk rack and set it. Then the disk drive mechanism is moved to a dedicated position for performing the disk reproducing process. However, since the disk reproducing apparatus needs to separately prepare a region for transferring each of the disk drive mechanisms to retrieve an objective disk from the disk rack and a region of dedicated position for positioning the disk drive mechanism to reproduce the extracted disk, there is a problem in that the whole apparatus becomes large in size. In addition to this, when it is necessary to provide plural transfer mechanisms for transferring disk drive mechanisms individually, the apparatus becomes mechanically complex.